Heavy Quark Production Asymmetries

In the hadroproduction of charm (or heavy flavours in general) in the context of string fragmentation, the pull of a beam remnant at the other end of a string may give a charm hadron more energy than the perturbatively produced one. The collapse of a low-mass string to a single hadron is the extreme case in this direction, and gives rise to asymmetries between leading and non-leading charm hadrons. We study these phenomena within the Lund string fragmentation model and improve the modelling in part by a consideration of hadroproduction data. Applications include heavy quark production in any collision between hadron-like particles such as \gamma p at HERA and pp at HERA-B or the LHC.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of the International Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics, Tampere, Finland, 15-21 July 1999, edited by K. Huitu, H. Kurki-Suonio and J. Maalamp

Production and Hadronization of Heavy Quarks

Heavy long-lived quarks, i.e. charm and bottom, are frequently studied both as tests of QCD and as probes for other physics aspects within and beyond the standard model. The long life-time implies that charm and bottom hadrons are formed and observed. This hadronization process cannot be studied in isolation, but depends on the production environment. Within the framework of the string model, a major effect is the drag from the other end of the string that the c/b quark belongs to. In extreme cases, a small-mass string can collapse to a single hadron, thereby giving a non-universal flavour composition to the produced hadrons. We here develop and present a detailed model for the charm/bottom hadronization process, involving the various aspects of string fragmentation and collapse, and put it in the context of several heavy-flavour production sources. Applications are presented from fixed-target to LHC energies.Comment: 40 pages, 25 figure

Drag Effects in Charm Photoproduction

We have refined a model for charm fragmentation at hadron colliders. This model can also be applied to the photoproduction of charm. We investigate the effect of fragmentation on the distribution of produced charm quarks. The drag effect is seen to produce charm hadrons that are shifted in rapidity in the direction of the beam remnant. We also study the importance of different production mechanisms such as charm in the photon and from parton showers.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, Proc. of DESY Workshop "Monte Carlo Generators for HERA Physics

The Sources of b-Quarks at the Tevatron and their Correlations

The leading-log order QCD hard scattering Monte-Carlo models of HERWIG, ISAJET, and PYTHIA are used to study the sources of b-quarks at the Tevatron. The reactions responsible for producing b and bbar quarks are separated into three categories; flavor creation, flavor excitation, and parton-shower/fragmentation. Flavor creation corresponds to the production of a b-bbar pair by gluon fusion or by annihilation of light quarks, while flavor excitation corresponds to a b or bbar quark being knocked out of the initial-state by a gluon or a light quark or antiquark. The third source occurs when a b-bbar pair is produced within a parton shower or during the fragmentation process of a gluon or a light quark or antiquark (includes gluon splitting). The QCD Monte-Carlo models indicate that all three sources of b-quarks are important at the Tevatron and when combined they qualitatively describe the inclusive cross-section data. Correlations between the b and bbar quark are very different for the three sources and can be used to isolate the individual contributions.Comment: RevTex4, 14 pages, 20 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Transverse Momentum as a Measure of Colour Topologies

Several distinct colour flow topologies are possible in multiparton configurations. A method is proposed to find the correct topology, based on a minimization of the total transverse momentum of produced particles. This method is studied for three-jet $Z^0 \to q\overline{q} g$ and four-jet $W^+W^- \to q_1\overline{q}_2q_3\overline{q}_4$ events. It is shown how the basic picture is smeared, especially by parton-shower activity. The method therefore may not be sufficient on its own, but could still be a useful complement to others, and e.g. help provide some handle on colour rearrangement effects.Comment: 1+8 pages, LaTeX2e, 6 eps figures included in file using filecontents environment

QCD Radiation off Heavy Particles

We study QCD radiation in decay processes involving heavy particles. As input, the first-order gluon emission rate is calculated in a number of reactions, and comparisons of the energy flow patterns show a non-negligible process dependence. To proceed further, the QCD parton shower language offers a convenient approach to include multi-gluon emission effects, and to describe exclusive event properties. An existing shower algorithm is extended to take into account the process-dependent mass, spin and parity effects, as given by the matrix element calculations. This allows an improved description of multiple gluon emission effects off b and t quarks, and also off nonstandard particles like squarks and gluinos. Phenomenological applications are presented for bottom production at LEP, Higgs particle decay to heavy flavours, top production and decay at linear colliders, and some simple supersymmetric processes.Comment: 44 pages, 15 pages, 4 table

Production mechanisms of charm hadrons in the string model

In the hadroproduction of charm in the context of string fragmentation, the pull of a beam remnant at the other end of a string may give a charm hadron more energy than the perturbatively produced charm quark. The collapse of a low-mass string to a single hadron is the extreme case in this direction, and gives rise to asymmetries between charm and anticharm hadron spectra. We study these phenomena, and develop models that describe the characteristics not only of the charm hadrons but also of the associated event.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Phys. Lett.

B Production Asymmetries in Perturbative QCD

This paper explores a new mechanism for B production in which a b quark combines with a light parton from the hard-scattering process before hadronizing into the B hadron. This recombination mechanism can be calculated within perturbative QCD up to a few nonperturbative constants. Though suppressed at large transverse momentum by a factor Lambda_QCD m_b/p_t^2 relative to b quark fragmentation production, it can be important at large rapidities. A signature for this heavy-quark recombination mechanism in proton-antiproton colliders is the presence of rapidity asymmetries in B cross sections. Given reasonable assumptions about the size of nonperturbative parameters entering the calculation, we find that the asymmetries are only significant for rapidities larger than those currently probed by collider experiments.Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX, 4 ps figures, tightenlines, sections added, final version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

The Leading Particle Effect from Heavy-Quark Recombination

The leading particle effect in charm hadroproduction is an enhancement of the cross section for a charmed hadron D in the forward direction of the beam when the beam hadron has a valence parton in common with the D. The large D+/D- asymmetry observed by the E791 experiment is an example of this phenomenon. We show that the heavy-quark recombination mechanism provides an economical explanation for this effect. In particular, the D+/D- asymmetry can be fit reasonably well using a single parameter whose value is consistent with a recent determination from charm photoproduction.Comment: Revtex file, 4 pages, 3 figure